Puppy Litter Training
Finding the right brand of puppy litter for the newest member of your household is the easy part. Not all dog owners choose the puppy litter route, as many find it just as convenient to take the puppy outside once the puppy is old enough to begin roaming about the house.
Periodic trips outside are not a lot of fun if one lives in a high rise apartment or when the weather is particularly nasty, and puppy wants to take his or her own sweet time while you stand there with rain dripping down your nose. Still, having a grown dog, or even a puppy, that has been trained to conduct business out of doors is usually seen as an improvement over having to periodically empty and refill a litter box.
Cats seem to take to a litter box more quickly than dogs, perhaps due to the fact that cats seem more intent on burying what they leave behind, or at least going through the motions, and are reluctant to go places where covering up cannot be done unless they have no choice.
A puppy of course will go whenever and wherever it wishes unless trained otherwise. There might seem to be a significant difference between housebreaking a puppy to let you know when a visit to the backyard is necessary and training a puppy to go to the puppy litter box when the urge is there. Basically, there really is not all that much of a difference. It’s really a matter of establishing the rules, and of being consistent when teaching a dog to follow those rules. Given the proper training, your pet will eventually take ownership of the puppy litter box, and would then be reluctant to go anywhere else.
What If The Litter Box Were To Disappear? – Once you’ve trained your pet to use the puppy litter box faithfully, there can be a downside. At some point in time a decision may be made to get rid of the litter box. That might not seem to represent any sort of a problem, but to the dog it could be a major issue. Your dog has been trained to use the puppy litter and now it has disappeared. The dog is going to have to go sometime, and isn’t going to let you know it needs to go outside because it hasn’t learned to make a distinction between the gravel driveway and the living room carpet. It knows it shouldn’t use the latter, but has to go somewhere, so goes wherever is handy.
Your dog hasn’t been a bad dog, even if a carpet stain has been created. The dog didn’t break the rules, in getting rid of the puppy litter box, the owner did! The solution? Housebreaking. Now instead of puppy litter, the dog needs to become acquainted with the real purpose of a backyard which is, or a specific location in it is, the new litter box.
Litter Training, Part 2 – If the first step in making this transition, which might otherwise be a bit traumatic for the dog, is to place the litter box outside and leave it there until the dog just naturally lets you know it’s time to go out, things may go much more smoothly. A good second step is to start sprinkling some of the puppy litter around the outside of the box. Your dog will recognize the litter as being familiar and begin to use it. Before long the litter box can be taken away, and shortly thereafter there will no longer be any need to sprinkle litter about, as your dog will have taken ownership of the new location. No more problems – until you move.